The presidential candidate who isn’t a presidential candidate but will probably soon be a presidential candidate spent part of the past week in New Hampshire, the place where presidential candidacies go to either be born or die on the vine.

We’re talking John Kasich, the 69th governor of Ohio here.

The governor of a key swing state who has been racing around from one early primary or caucus state for months now, dropping big hints about wanting to be president, but always stopping short of announcing his candidacy.

WVXU politics reporter Howard Wilkinson spoke with news director Maryanne Zeleznik Monday morning about Kentucky's Rand Paul and Ohio's John Kasich - specifically, what the polling in the early caucus and primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire have to say about them.

Can the Republicans win the White House without winning Ohio next year?

Conventional wisdom (not to mention history, which is a better guide) says, no, they can’t. No Republican president – and we’re going back to the very first, Abraham Lincoln – has ever won the White House without winning Ohio.

In fact, the way the electoral college map skews toward Democratic presidential candidates, most political analysts see the Republican nominee coming up short of the 270 electoral votes needed to win without taking both Ohio and Florida.

After spending time in the key presidential primary state of New Hampshire, Ohio Gov. John Kasich took more questions about his possible presidential campaign on national TV this weekend.

It comes amid increasing signs that he is serious about running.

On NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday - where 16 years ago Kasich announced he’d formed an exploratory committee to run for president in 1999 – Kasich said he still hadn’t decided, but was weighing his options with two main thoughts in mind.

WVXU politics reporter Howard Wilkinson talked this morning with Jay Hanselman about the possibility that both Ohio and Kentucky will have contenders for the GOP presidential nomination - Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Kentucky's Sen. Rand Paul.

Ohio is a quadrennial battleground in presidential elections; and Kentucky – well, Kentucky is not, but they do love their politics in the Commonwealth. Though not as much as they love their basketball.

But the two states separated by the muddy river may both do something they don’t do very often, at least not in the past century: produce bona fide presidential candidates.

They are, of course, the junior U.S. senator from Bowling Green, Ky., Rand Paul; and the native Pennsylvanian-turned-Buckeye who was re-elected governor last fall in a cakewalk, John Kasich.

WVXU political reporter Howard Wilkinson talked with Maryanne Zeleznik this morning about the fact that Republican governor John Kasich has to decide soon if he is running for the GOP presidential nomination. And former Democratic governor Ted Strickland is on the verge of deciding whether or not to make a bid for the U.S. Senate.